TidBITS#483/31-May-99
=====================
Apple is hard at work on Mac OS X, slated for an early 2000
release. But will Mac OS X provide the best of the Macintosh along
with the best of the NeXT, or will it recast the Macintosh as a
NeXT-like system? Read on for a number of concerns, as well as a
look at utilities for enhancing your mouse. In the news, we look
at the releases of Netopia's Timbuktu 5.0 and HouseCall, Fog
City's LetterRip Pro 3.0.5, and Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 5.1
Topics:
MailBITS/31-May-99
Maximizing the Mouse
Mac OS X or Mac OS NeXT?
Copyright 1999 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
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MailBITS/31-May-99
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**Timbuktu Pro 5.0 & HouseCall** -- Netopia has released Timbuktu
Pro 5.0 for the Mac OS, the latest version of its highly regarded
remote control software, plus HouseCall, a new remote control
product geared toward technical support. Timbuktu Pro 5.0 offers
improved performance controlling remote computers via a modem, a
TCP/IP browser for local networks, improved intercom and voice-
over-IP capabilities, plus a new Tele/Modem toggle that enables
users to switch between voice and remote control functions on an
analog phone line without redialing. Timbuktu Pro 5.0 requires a
PowerPC-based machine with at least Mac OS 8.1; single-user
licenses start at $99 with discounts available for multi-user
packs. Upgrades from previous versions of Timbuktu start at $30,
with similar multi-user upgrade discounts.
Netopia's new HouseCall is designed to enable Macintosh experts to
provide technical assistance to other Mac users online. The expert
runs a free Doctor version of HouseCall, which communicates with a
licensed HouseCall Patient control panel on the remote system.
Together, the Doctor and Patient software enable the expert to
observe and control the screen of a remote Macintosh plus exchange
files, just like Timbuktu. HouseCall also offers the same
Tele/Modem toggle. In addition, Netopia runs a HouseCall Internet
Locator service so HouseCall patients can be located by their
doctor whenever they're online, even over dynamic dialup
connections. HouseCall requires at least Mac OS 8.1 and a Mac with
a 68040 or PowerPC processor; client licenses start at $30 for a
single user, going up to $200 for a ten-user pack. The HouseCall
Doctor application is free; evaluation versions of HouseCall (and
Timbuktu Pro 5.0) are available from Netopia's Web site. [GD]
**LetterRip Pro 3.0.5 Adds POP Features & Server Tweaks** -- Fog
City Software has released LetterRip Pro 3.0.5, a maintenance
release of its $395 mailing list software for the Mac OS. (See
"Going Pro with LetterRip Pro" in TidBITS-473_ for a review of
LetterRip Pro 3) LetterRip Pro 3.0.5 adds the ability to handle
automatic -on, -off, and -digest subscription accounts while using
LetterRip with a single POP address, provides a way to change the
incoming SMTP port, adds headers to non-MIME digests so email
clients can better handle quoted-printable encoding, and fixes a
handful of initialization issues. LetterRip Pro 3.0.5 is a free
update to LetterRip Pro 3.x owners (the download ranges from 550K
to 2.9 MB, depending whether you need the full installer or just
the server application); owners of earlier versions of LetterRip
Pro may be able to update for free, otherwise the update is $145.
A fully functional 30-day demo from Fog City's Web site. [GD]
**Apple's New Technology Gap** -- Apple Computer has appointed
Millard "Mickey" Drexler to its board of directors. Drexler isn't
in the computer business; rather, he's the chairman and CEO of
Gap, Inc., a worldwide clothing and apparel retailer that's also
behind the well-known Banana Republic and Old Navy clothing
brands. Apple apparently hopes to leverage Drexler's consumer and
retail marketing experience to expand Apple's user base and
product appeal. Anyone for a khaki iMac? [GD]
**BBEdit 5.1 Rolls In Support for MacPerl** -- Bare Bones Software
has released BBEdit 5.1, the latest version of its high-end text
editor used by programmers and Web authors. BBEdit 5.1 offers
integrated support for MacPerl, the Mac OS port of the programming
language often used for text processing and CGI applications on
Web servers. BBEdit 5.1 offers a special menu for MacPerl scripts
and enables users to create custom "Perl filters" that operate on
the contents of BBEdit document windows. Among other changes,
BBEdit 5.1 integrates more fully with the Projector source control
system used by Apple's (now free) Macintosh Programmer's Workshop
(MPW), offers an improved multi-layout Web Color palette, rolls in
improvements to its HTML verification utilities, and enhances
tools designed to clean up after visual HTML editors. The BBEdit
5.1 update is a 2.4 MB download available for free to all BBEdit
5.x owners; owners of previous versions of BBEdit can upgrade for
$39, and $79 upgrades are available for owners of competing
programs or the freeware BBEdit Lite. [GD]
Maximizing the Mouse
--------------------
by Adam C. Engst
No, this article is not about squeezing profit from Disney stock.
Our Macs all feature those unassuming rodents for clicking,
dragging, and generally mousing around. Some Macintosh users,
myself included, have moved on from _rodentia_macintosh_ to a more
advanced species - in my case, a four-button Kensington TurboMouse
trackball, which comes with the flexible Kensington MouseWorks
software for assigning functionality to the four buttons,
controlling acceleration, and so on. Other alternate pointing
devices no doubt come with similar software.
But a few recent announcements turned my mind to the many people
who are still using the garden variety Macintosh mouse and what
options they have for saving the day with a mighty mouse. Keep in
mind that I haven't been able to test all of these utilities due
to a lack of appropriate hardware, and mixing and matching these
utilities may prove dangerous, since they tend to provide similar
functions.
I've intentionally concentrated here on a few select programs that
relate directly to the mouse hardware itself and actions you
perform with the mouse, since any attempt to navigate the full
maze of mouse utilities would make this a truly cheesy article. If
the items mentioned here whet your thirst for other mouse-related
interface enhancements, check out the numerous other utilities
that came up in a TidBITS Talk thread recently.
**USB Overdrive** -- The prolific Alessandro Levi Montalcini,
perhaps best known for his macro program KeyQuencer, has released
USB Overdrive, a universal USB driver that claims to handle all
USB mice, trackballs, joysticks, and gamepads from any
manufacturer. So if you have a Mac with USB ports (or if you buy a
Keyspan USB card for an older Mac), you can now use a wide variety
of USB devices that were designed for PCs.
USB Overdrive doesn't let you just _use_ these devices, though, it
lets you access all the buttons, switches, wheels, and controls
that may appear on them. You can link a scrolling wheel to
document scrolling, Control-clicking to a second mouse button, or
complex macros to other controls (not surprising, given's
Alessandro's experience with KeyQuencer; see "KeyQuencer -
QuicKeys Quencher?" in TidBITS-351_). Function mapping can be
either global or specific to certain applications, and USB
Overdrive can work with multiple USB devices at once.
New to the recently released USB Overdrive 1.1 are an auto-scroll
feature that doesn't require a mouse wheel, new application-
specific mouse speed settings, added support for more USB devices,
and more. Frankly, if you have a USB-capable Mac, USB Overdrive
opens up the entire world of PC USB hardware, which helps everyone
involved. USB Overdrive 1.1 is $20 shareware and a 250K download.
**TheMouse2B** -- If USB Overdrive is overkill or if you don't
have USB, consider Matthew Dolan's TheMouse2B, a control panel
that lets you configure the second mouse button on your mouse,
should you have a mouse with multiple buttons but no customization
software. You can configure the second mouse button to act as a
single-click, double-click, click-lock (for dragging), or Control-
click for accessing contextual menus (actually, any modifier click
is possible, so you could have it Option-click to switch and hide
applications). TheMouse2B reportedly works with a variety of ADB
and USB two-button mice under System 7.0 and later (Mac OS 8 or
later recommended). A 97K download, TheMouse2B is $10 shareware.
**Snap-To and Scrollability** -- A popular option in the
Kensington MouseWorks software is the capability to have the mouse
cursor snap immediately to default buttons in dialog boxes that
appear. I use it and like it for the most part, although I
occasionally end up clicking the wrong button, especially when
faced with a number of dialog boxes in sequence. For people who
don't use Kensington pointing devices, Eden Sherry's $5 shareware
Snap-To control panel offers the same functionality. Snap-To
sports a few features beyond the basic Kensington MouseWorks
functionality as well. You can disable Snap-To in Open and Save
dialog boxes, where you usually need to navigate your hard disk or
enter a file name before clicking the default Open or Save
buttons. And Snap-To can move the cursor to the default button in
a smooth gliding motion, rather than the abrupt snap that can
cause you to lose track of where the mouse cursor had been. Snap-
To is an 81K download and works on any Mac with System 7.0 or
greater.
Eden has another clever utility called Scrollability that offers
two additional ways of scrolling windows. You may be familiar with
the "grabber" hand method of scrolling in some graphics and layout
applications, such as QuarkXPress, PageMaker, or Photoshop. The
Finder added that feature (try Command-dragging a Finder window)
in Mac OS 8.5, but with Scrollability, you can grab-scroll windows
in almost any application (and you can exclude those applications
that conflict with Scrollability). For grab scrolling, you can
define any set of modifier keys and limit the area in which you
can cause grab-scrolling to happen. If holding down modifier keys
is too annoying for you (and you don't have a multiple-button
mouse or trackball that could have a button defined to the
modifier key combination), Scrollability's other feature is to
define an area (10 percent of the window height, by default) on
the top and bottom of each window. Moving the cursor into those
areas turns it into an up or down-pointing arrow and scrolls the
window. It's not for everyone, but if you find the standard scroll
bars clumsy, it's worth a try. Scrollability is $10 shareware and
is a 134K download.
**SmartScroll** -- Other scrolling innovations in the Mac OS 8.5
Finder are proportional thumbs that reflect the length of the
window contents and live scrolling that moves the content of the
window along with the scroll thumb. But those features are
available only in the Finder and some updated applications. What
if you want to take advantage of them in older applications? Then
you'll need Marc Moini's SmartScroll, which makes these features
available across all applications. SmartScroll works on any Mac
released since 1990 running System 7.0 or later. It's $12
shareware and is a 208K download.
**Prestissimo** -- A long time ago, I used a utility called
DoubleScroll, which provided double arrows on both ends of the
scroll bar. DoubleScroll is still around, though it doesn't work
with Mac OS 8. Although the Mac OS 8.5 Appearance control panel's
Smart Scrolling feature can put double arrows on the scroll bars,
it provides only one set at the bottom and right ends of the
scroll bars. Luckily, a freeware control panel called Prestissimo
can restore the functionality originally offered by DoubleScroll.
Along with giving you better control over the keys used for
application switching and the Application Palette in Mac OS 8.5,
Prestissimo enables double scroll arrows at both ends of the
scroll bars. Ironically, Prestissimo only reveals functionality
that already exists in Mac OS 8.5 but that Apple chose to hide.
If, like me, you've missed double scroll arrows on both ends of
the scroll bars, give Prestissimo a try.
**No Reason to Grouse about Your Mouse** -- It's possible you've
never needed or desired any added mouse functionality, and if so,
Apple would probably agree with you, considering how unchanged
mouse functionality has remained over the years. However, you may
be surprised how one or two little utilities can enhance to your
use of the Macintosh.
Mac OS X or Mac OS NeXT?
------------------------
by Adam C. Engst
When Apple acquired NeXT in late 1996 the goal was ostensibly to
acquire a next-generation operating system that could replace the
Mac OS, since Apple had bought into the notion that the Mac OS was
creaky and could barely cross the street under its own steam. As
the past two and half years have demonstrated, the most valuable
part of the NeXT acquisition was in fact the return of Steve Jobs
to Apple's helm. Since Jobs has become interim CEO, Apple has
successfully executed a number of daring moves, most notably the
release of the iMac.
It's easy to forget that the other effects of NeXT acquisition
have barely begun to be recognized. Sure, Apple has talked about a
road map to future versions of the Mac OS and has even released
Mac OS X Server, but for the most part, we've simply seen
improvements to the Mac OS we know well. But if you look back the
schedule Jobs laid out at the Worldwide Developer's Conference
(WWDC) a year ago, you'll see that Apple has done well at meeting
those self-imposed deadlines. Mac OS 8.5 shipped on schedule in Q3
of 1998, Mac OS X Server was only a little late in Q1 of 1999, and
Mac OS 8.6 appeared soon after its scheduled Q1 1999 launch. The
next major release comes in Q3 of 1999, when Apple plans to ship
the next version of Mac OS 8, codenamed Sonata, with the first
full release of Mac OS X scheduled for early 2000.
One friend who attended this year's WWDC called it "nicely
boring," because along with the schedule, Apple was sticking to
the same stories told at the previous year's WWDC. Despite the
lack of excitement, that's great news to hear, since developers in
the past have griped about paying a lot of money to go and listen
to Apple evangelize technologies that would meet the guillotine
shortly thereafter. Consistency is good, and for Apple,
consistency seems to mean adding underlying improvements to Mac OS
8.x and concentrating on the release of Mac OS X.
**Mac OS X Details** -- Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Mac
OS X for current Macintosh users is that it is slated to support
most existing Mac OS 8.x applications, some that won't be able to
take advantage of Mac OS X's advanced features, and others that
can become full-fledged citizens by sticking to a set of current
Mac OS application programming interfaces (APIs) called Carbon,
which Mac OS X will support directly. If Apple and Macintosh
developers are able to pull off the Carbon strategy, it will truly
be a best case situation where existing applications can take
advantage of Mac OS X's features without needing complete
rewrites. Here are the basic levels in Mac OS X:
* Classic: This "Mac OS virtual machine," which replaces the Blue
Box (a part of Rhapsody, the precursor to Mac OS X), will let us
run current applications that are not Carbon-compatible and thus
won't benefit from the advanced features of Mac OS X. At WWDC,
Apple showed Classic applications running in their own windows,
not all together in a single Blue Box window as previously shown.
* Carbon: Applications compiled for use with Carbon will run
directly under Mac OS X, taking advantage of protected memory,
preemptive multitasking, and other features of Mac OS X. Carbon is
important to Mac OS X's success, since Apple claims it's easy to
make existing Mac OS applications Carbon-compatible. Some
developers dispute the ease of making an existing application
Carbon-compatible, but none argue that it will be easier than
porting to Cocoa or rewriting from scratch.
* Cocoa: Applications written for NeXT's OpenStep (perhaps with
some tweaking) and future applications written specifically to Mac
OS X take advantage of all of Mac OS X's features. This native
layer of Mac OS X, previously called the Yellow Box, is now called
Cocoa. Cocoa will also offer advanced support for Java.
* Command-line: Yes, Virginia, there will be a command-line option
in Mac OS X for working with command-line Unix applications. For
the sake of most Mac users, we hope it's a totally ancillary
interface.
This combination of the best of the Macintosh with the best of
NeXT's operating system technology sounds great in theory, but as
Mac OS X's release date looms closer, concerns arise. Most of the
public moves from Apple have focused on improving the Mac OS and
releasing new Macintosh hardware. But all those employees who came
over from NeXT haven't been sitting still. They may wear Apple
badges now, but it's possible that on some levels these people are
more interested in turning the Macintosh into a NeXT-like system
than in making a Macintosh system built in part from NeXT
technologies. I commented on this back in 1997, when the lines
between Apple and NeXT technologies were more distinct. Things
have blurred since then, but a sense of NeXT/Unix mentalities
being forced onto Mac OS X still remains.
Examples of this unsettled feeling broke the surface at this
month's WWDC. In each case, Apple has made promises about
maintaining the best of the Macintosh, but after discussions with
Macintosh developers, we're left with concerns about how the
situations will play out in reality. Consider the following:
**Carbon Finder** -- At WWDC, Jobs and Apple vice president Phil
Schiller showed the "Carbon Finder," a version of the Finder
rewritten from scratch. Unfortunately, on the surface it bore
little resemblance to the Finder that tens of millions of
Macintosh users use every day, and the audience greeted it with a
combination of hisses and silence (comments after the keynote were
even less polite). Instead, the "Carbon Finder" looked like an
updated version of the NeXT Workspace Manager file browser (see
the Macworld Online picture linked below) that was used by at best
tens of thousands of people in NeXT's heyday.
It seems that with proper settings, the Carbon Finder could be
made to look like the current Finder, and it should provide a
better interface for network browsing than the Chooser or even the
Network Browser, which isn't part of the Finder. Apple has long
needed to resurrect something along the lines of the PowerTalk
Catalog, a desktop icon that provided access to networked servers
(see "PowerTalk Arrives" from TidBITS-195_ for description).
There's nothing wrong with multiple pane file browsers, but they
often aren't as flexible as today's Finder. No one minds Apple
providing a file browser as an option, even as a View option, but
if Apple attempts to replace the Finder with a less-capable file
browser, current Mac users will revolt. For a preview of a file
browser, try Greg Landweber's shareware utility Greg's Browser.
**The Yellow Brick Pathname** -- Mac OS X is based on Unix, and
one of the basic aspects of Unix is a reliance on special
directories with cryptic names like /bin, /etc, /usr, and so on.
That's not all that different than the Mac OS's reliance on
special folders like the Extensions, Control Panels, and
Preferences folders. The main difference is that Unix file systems
rely on pathnames not just for the special directories, but for
all directories. In contrast, the Mac's HFS and HFS Plus file
systems assign every file and folder a unique ID number. The
beauty of file IDs is that their independence from names and paths
allows a level of abstraction that's not possible under Unix. For
instance, if you rename the folder that contains your
applications, everything works as it did before, because file IDs
don't change. In Unix, such an action would cause all pathnames to
change, in turn causing applications to lose track of support
files.
In addition, it's possible on the Mac to have multiple volumes
with the same name, something that doesn't come up with Unix
(where the root level is always /) or Windows (where every volume
has a unique letter). The impact of losing the capability to have
multiple volumes with the same name could range from annoying to
disastrous.
Mac OS X is slated to support HFS Plus by default, so file IDs
should continue to work on disks that use HFS Plus. However, the
fact that standard NeXT programming practices encourage pathname
use may result in file IDs not being used. It's also unclear what
will happen when sophisticated users move back and forth between
the different file systems also supported by Mac OS X. Even
mentioning multiple file systems to most Mac users is a bad thing,
so let's hope Apple manages to hide the entire situation from
normal users.
**What's Your Type?** Mac OS X, being Unix, may also rely in part
on filename extensions to assign types to files, just like
Windows. A GIF file must have a .gif extension, a text file must
have a .txt extension, and so on. The Mac OS instead uses file
type and creator data structures to type files, so although you're
welcome to add .gif to a GIF file's name, the operating system
identifies the file as a GIF based on its file type code, not its
file name.
Another feature Macintosh users expect is that files of the same
type can open in different applications when double-clicked. One
text file might open in SimpleText, whereas another might open in
BBEdit or Nisus Writer. In Unix, as in Windows, files of the same
type can be linked only with a single application. Aside from the
obvious loss of functionality here, there's a loss of control for
the user. Suddenly, you must name your files correctly or they
won't work as you expect. I can't imagine trying to explain to my
grandmother that every file she creates must have a specific set
of characters at the end of the filename. Applications could add
them automatically, as many Windows programs do, but that's also
confusing.
Again, since Mac OS X will support HFS Plus, type and creator
codes will probably be retained at least when using an HFS Plus
file system. Expert users are curious how Mac OS X's Unix
utilities will interoperate with HFS Plus volumes, since it's
unlikely that the Unix file copy command cp, for instance, would
retain type and creator codes when copying files on an HFS Plus
file system.
**To Text or not to Text** -- As a final concern, consider the
humble preferences file. Normal Macintosh users seldom interact
with their preferences files directly, because it's an accepted
tenet of the Macintosh world that applications must provide an
interface to their preferences. In the Unix world, though, text-
based preferences files rule.
As a friend has noted, attempt a real Apache configuration in
today's Mac OS X Server and you're in vi (an arcane Unix text
editor). Want to change a setting? Just edit the appropriate line
in this text file! That may work fine for Unix power users, but
it's a recipe for disaster in the Macintosh world. Text-based
preferences files are brittle; make a single character mistake and
the application won't behave as you expect.
Of course, an application could provide a graphical interface to
its preferences and save the results in textual form, but as we've
seen in programs ported from the Unix world, once there's a text-
based preferences file in use, creating a graphical interface
becomes a low priority and may never happen.
**Reading the Cocoa Leaves** -- These concerns are for the moment
just that, concerns. Mac OS X isn't scheduled to ship for at least
seven months, and since Mac OS X Server slipped from Q3 1998 to Q1
1999, it's entirely likely that the full Mac OS X will slip as
well.
That gives Apple time to make sure that Mac OS X truly
incorporates the combination of the best features of the Mac OS
(the user experience) and the best features of the NeXT (modern
operating system features). Steve Jobs has called the Mac OS
Apple's "crown jewels," saying that Apple had to concentrate on
the Mac OS because that was where the company's customers were. No
one bought Macs during Apple's death spiral days because they
cared that Apple would one day release a totally different
operating system. They bought Macs then, as they do now, because
the Mac OS remains the best computing experience available today.
I sincerely hope that Jobs wasn't buttering up existing Macintosh
users merely to bolster Apple's then-waning fortunes, because his
comments then were on target. As good as aspects of the NeXT may
have been, it was not a commercial success, whereas the Macintosh
changed the face of computing. Keep the Macintosh face, Apple, and
utilize the NeXT technology behind the scenes where it can work
its magic without disturbing millions of Macintosh users.
$$
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